🚀 go-pugleaf

Follow-ups to this message go to borland.public.midas.

When I was the MIDAS product manager, I used to get a lot of people asking
me about site licenses or shrink-wrap licenses for MIDAS. Now I'm a
Developer Relations manager and travel even more than I did as a product
manager, so I hear the question even more frequently. Furthermore, since our
unlimited server license price has dropped from US $5000 to $299, I get the
question even more frequently (and I'm not the only one being asked the
question).

So, I'm putting together a proposal to present to our Product Management
team for a new MIDAS licensing scheme to add a fixed-price licensing
solution for two kinds of uses:

- Corporate site licensing
- "Shrink-wrap" licensing

Both of these licenses would be for a specific version of MIDAS. For
example, MIDAS 3 support shipped with Delphi 5 and C++ Builder 5, so the
license you would purchase for products produced with Delphi or C++ Builder
5 would be for MIDAS 3.

For corporate site licensing, I was thinking the license would pertain to an
unlimited number of MIDAS server machines in the same physical location.

For shrink-wrap licensing, I was thinking the license would pertain to a
specific shrink-wrap product you produce, where you may or may not know how
many copies of the "shrink-wrap" product are produced.

However, I'm pretty open-minded about this, so let me know what YOU think
about it. This message is entirely for getting a dialog started with the
customers who are using MIDAS or who want to use MIDAS.

If you have suggestions for different ways the license should be structured,
please respond TO THIS MESSAGE ON THE NEWSGROUP, NOT TO ME IN EMAIL to let
me know. I want to keep all discussions of this potential new MIDAS license
public, because it's the customers who are going to be buying the license,
not me.

Some MIDAS licensing background:

We currently have two types of deployment licenses for MIDAS 3:

- Free for 1 and 2 tier
- $299 per server machine for multi-tier, with as many MIDAS servers as you
want on that machine

(See http://community.borland.com/article/0,1410,20870,00.html, "When do I
need to buy a MIDAS license?" for more information)

Please respond to this message in the newsgroup rather than through direct
email to me. Replies will go to borland.public.midas. Please keep the
conversation public, because that's the best way to get the most feedback
about it from the most customers.

Thanks for your time and comments, and let me know what you want!

John Kaster
Sr. Developer Relations Manager
Inprise/Borland
http://community.borland.com